So after a disastrous presentation where nothing seemed to go right, I decided that this intervention is probably where I leave Ms. Anderson behind to try and gouge something out of my own voice. I have instead turned to my writing heroes like Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane and Edward Bond for inspiration, and my own theatrical writings to go to the dark place.
I make it sound ominous, but what I mean is I really want to spill my guts this time. This time, I'm looking at the stage as a canvas for an emotion. As Helen has said, I'm trying to think with singularity this time, or to have a more streamlined piece. I keep having one thought which is "I have one big clock, and it just keeps ticking" with the constant ticking of a clock. I'm reminded very much of the Glass Man from the film "Amelie", who filmed the clock outside his window so he could always see what the time was.
Also from the makishi workshops, I realised how cathartic it could be to say the words out loud that you keep. especially in front of an audience; it gives them a sense of purpose, more meaning.
With this very much in mind, I started with the initial idea of trying to convey what it was like to work the nightshift; isolation, tiredness, insomnia. And so this time I started using the workshops more efficiently and workshopped this particular material with Stacy Makishi on the 21st of November. When it came to doing the writing exercises, I was very interested that I wrote some answering machine messages from myself. From there, I started making links with Lacan's sense of "the mirror stage" and "the Other". Could there be interplay between me and a mediatized self? A technological self? A self that existed in the past juxtaposed with a self that exists now? By producing a mediatized self and a live self, I will be physically representing both the 'Real' and the 'Imaginary' parts of the ego.
In terms of 'liveness', this also means that I will be existing in the past and in the present onstage. I find this quite interesting, even though it would mean a lot of dialogue would be pre-recorded. But perhaps it is the interplay that would be more interesting, or how to use the screen to interact with me and the audience.
This has been heavy in my mind for the past couple of days now. I also thought about Cindy Sherman, and how she interprets sense of self in the "Untitled Film Stills" series. Is it possible to make my two selves enitirely different? Should they be?
For the music and movement, I am focussing on stillness, emptiness and the use of ticking working up towards a frenzy.
I think it's hard to go on further without establishing a text, so my next step is to write a provisional script and keep going.
